Monthly Archives: June 2016

Reviews

Review Flashback: Buffy the Vampire Slayer: “Out of Mind, Out of Sight”, “Prophecy Girl” and “When She Was Bad”

I continued my viewing of Buffy episodes. I tend not to watch in one go but I prefer to post a flashback summary.

1×11 “Out of Mind, Out of Sight”buffy-season1

An ok episode about an invisible girl who tries to kill Cordelia (Charisma Carpenter) and her friends. Not vampire related. Could have been more interesting as I’m not sure why she wanted to take revenge. It wasn’t their fault she became invisible in the first place.

 

1×12 “Prophecy Girl” is the final episode of year one. It shows the trio – Buffy, Willow and Xander – starting to unravel, the way I see it. SPOILERS for this part: Continue reading Review Flashback: Buffy the Vampire Slayer: “Out of Mind, Out of Sight”, “Prophecy Girl” and “When She Was Bad” →

Reviews

Review Flashback: Buffy the Vampire Slayer: “I Robot You Jane”, “The Puppet Show” and “Nightmares”

So I watched another block of 3 episodes of Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Not all in one go actually.

1×8 “I Robot You, Jane”buffy-season1

This was not scary. It was however an exaggerated tale of a demon trapped in antiquity inside an old book, which gets scanned by Willow releasing the demon into the Internet where he can leave a trail of evil, controlling geeks in Summerdale.

I did think it was ok but it’s really too exaggerated compared to the rest. You have to keep in mind the time when it was produced, though.

1×9 “The Puppet Show” is not bad at all, unlike what most people think! I enjoyed this tale of a demon hunter becoming trapped in this puppet. We get to see the new headmaster, Principal Synder played by Armin Shimerman (known for playing Quark on Star Trek Deep Space 9). I actually thought he would turn out to be the demon, but this was not the case. I really thought Giles would end up dead, too. Worth watching.

1×10 “Nightmares” is a scary episode if you can say that. Everyone’s nightmares come real in daytime. Xander ends up naked in class. Willow has to sing in the Opera – in italian – but cannot.  There’s a big bad vampire too. It’s all connected to Lucky 19, who is a hospitalised kid in a coma. The girl who goes for a smoke in the school basement but gets attacked by the vampire is reminiscent of one of the Smallville meteor freak of the week episodes. Buffy’s nightmare is of becoming a Vampire and buried alive. I enjoyed this too.

Reviews

Review Flashback: Buffy the Vampire Slayer: “Never Kill a Boy on the First Date”, “The Pack” and “Angel”

buffy-season1

I’ve been going back to Joss Whedon’s Buffy the Vampire Slayer lately! I’ve never watched it more than a few episodes in Season 1, so I thought I would watch some more.

1×5 “Never Kill a Boy on the First Date” isn’t bad at all. It’s good, really, we see Buffy meet Owen and they end up having a date. Almost. Because Vampires abound and a Slayer, well has to slay them. Giles wants Buffy to step up with her patrols whereas she wants to have a date. She tells Giles “Clark Kent has a job, I just want to go on a date.”

This really makes her seem like a real person and a likeable one.

Finally they break up because poor Owen is too addicted to danger.

1×6 “Pack”

There is this school outing at the nearby zoo (not sure why a school outing in america would just go to a very nearby zoo where you can walk to the school from the zoo in a few minutes). Some school bullies enter a section with some hyenas which is off-limits. Xander follows them and they all end up possessed by the Hyenas’ spirits or something.

It’s fun to see such a different Xander. Behind the possession, was the zookeeper who wished to be the one getting possessed.

Principal Flutie ends up dead, killed by the students (except Xander). I didn’t expect that to happen.

The school itself is vague in these episodes, there are few regulars except for Giles the school librarian. Smallville had a much better representation of a school.

1×7 “Angel” is a good introduction to this character which I wasn’t familiar with. He was, or rather is, a vampire, however he has suppressed his vampire longings by getting back his soul. There’s the vampire trio of the Master (no not the one from Doctor Who), young boy Colin and sexy Dara who longs to entire Angel back to vampirism. The way she plans on this is fascinating: she pretends to be a friend from Buffy’s school, bites Buffy’s mum Joyce and she practically throws Buffy’s mum into Angel’s arms in the moment Buffy is returning home. This way she hopes that Buffy will end up fighting Angel.

There are some smart character moments in this episode.